What the Lord can do with flour

To read the Bible in a year, read Second Kings 4–5 on May 12, In the year of our Lord Christ 2020

By Don Ruhl

Elisha continued to show that he had a double portion of Elijah’s spirit when he presented an unusual solution to a bad pot of stew:

And Elisha returned to Gilgal, and there was a famine in the land. Now the sons of the prophets were sitting before him; and he said to his servant, “Put on the large pot, and boil stew for the sons of the prophets.” So one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered from it a lapful of wild gourds, and came and sliced them into the pot of stew, though they did not know what they were. Then they served it to the men to eat. Now it happened, as they were eating the stew, that they cried out and said, “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” And they could not eat it. So he said, “Then bring some flour.” And he put it into the pot, and said, “Serve it to the people, that they may eat.” And there was nothing harmful in the pot.

– 2 Kings 4.38–41

Obviously it was not just the flour that did it—even as the mud that Jesus made with His saliva was not what healed a blind man, but the power of the Spirit in Jesus—so it was not the flour. The Lord used the flour as His means to bring a healing to that food.

Questions:

Why do you think the Lord used different methods to do miracles?

If He always used the same method, what then would people think was the power?